


every time.

by rxtrogression



Category: The Maze Runner (Movies), The Maze Runner Series - All Media Types, The Maze Runner Series - James Dashner
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Angst, M/M, Time Travel, newtmas - Freeform, thomas is a time traveler
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-07
Updated: 2018-03-07
Packaged: 2019-03-28 07:32:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13899312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rxtrogression/pseuds/rxtrogression
Summary: So this is how they end; much like how they begin.





	1. every time.

**Author's Note:**

> first off, i'd like to thank eve for the time traveler idea! i loosely based my interpretation of time traveling around the time traveler's wife, but take it as you will.
> 
> fic playlist can be found [here](https://open.spotify.com/user/xretrograde/playlist/7sJbbxnaTHb8RDg4BGIY3m?si=-0BNV1I9RWKrC04FOck3xQ)
> 
> dedicated to the tmr discord.
> 
> enjoy!

_“Clock time is our bank manager, tax collector, police inspector; this inner time is our wife.”_

\- J.B. Priestley

 

* * *

 

The first time Stephen jumps, he’s six. 

 

WICKED has just taken him away from his mother, and while he sits on the train, waiting for his future to unravel, he’s suddenly greeted by a mouth full of metal and bone-chilling cold. He’s shaking, wearing nothing but a tattered blue shirt and dirty brown cargo pants. And he’s moving up, surrounded by crates and the deafening screeches of metal on metal. Somebody is screaming. When his mouth goes impossibly dry with choked sobs, he realizes that somebody is _him_. Blinding light begins to open up above him, and he’s thrown to the bottom of the lift as it comes to a stop. Thrown to the present.

 

_“We’re really going to need you to accept your new name, Thomas.”_

 

_“My name is Stephen.”_

 

_Pain._

 

_“What’s your name?”_

 

_“Thomas.”_

 

_Pain._

 

_Thomas. My name is Thomas. I will never forget that._

 

The thought feels slightly off, but he doesn’t care, as long as the pain stops. And stop, it does. He opens his eyes to a gorgeous blond before him, sleeping peacefully. They’re a mess of tangled limbs, pushed closer together by the confines of their shared hammock. He doesn’t know who this boy is. In the midst of his panic, he thinks he’s stirred the beauty awake, and fond chocolate brown eyes meet his. 

 

“Tommy?” Even the boy’s voice is enchanting, raspy from disuse and laced with a hoarse rumble that Thomas can feel beneath his fingertips, where they rest on the blond’s hips. 

 

Thomas blinks.

 

Randall peers at him, face slack with shock. Slowly, he brings a device up to his ear.

 

“Paige. We need to talk.”

 

-

 

He’s twelve when he reflects on his odd ability. He hasn’t jumped time for a few months; WICKED has found a way to pacify him, and any time they sense his stress levels rising, they inject him with some odd substance. He doesn’t know what it is, and quite frankly, doesn’t care. He’s more prone to jumping when he’s under stress, but it seems to happen randomly as well. And he hates it. Jumping is terrifying. 

 

No, jumping to the past is okay. The past has his mother, though he can’t communicate what he knows to her. It’s almost heartbreaking.

 

_“You mustn’t play outside for so long, Stephen. Mommy worries. You don’t want mommy to worry, do you?”_ And his lovely mother is wide eyes and trembling lips, fighting back tears because she doesn’t know why her son disappears for so long. And Thomas holds her hands in his, bringing them to his face, battling sobs of his own. He loves this woman, and hates what he knows will become of her. 

 

This is the Before. Before the sun scorched the Earth. Before his mother was taken by the Flare.

 

Jumping to the future is where the world becomes unbearably terrifying.

 

His future is filled with the presence of a golden-haired angel. Sometimes, he’s in a grassy clearing, tortured by his confusion. Other times, he’s in the middle of a desert wasteland, throat dry.

 

One time, he finds himself face to face with the blond, holding a gun between them. 

 

He still doesn’t know their name.

 

-

 

The present is comforting. The present has Teresa, Dr. Paige, and a warm bed. The present seems infinite, where time is steady and Thomas can take leave in the luxury of stability.

 

Only, the present isn’t stable this time around. 

 

Thomas is twelve, and he’s face to face with the blond angel at his door, a mischievous smile on his younger features and radiating wild, carefree pleasure. 

 

So this is how they meet.

 

Newt knows Thomas, it seems. Which, in any other circumstance, would be alarming. But Thomas knows how time works, knows that whatever will come to pass will come regardless of what he does. He knows that the past happened, whether or not he was there to witness it. He’s stuck waiting for the future to happen, waiting for the anguish and heartbreak that he knows will come. This boy will be the death of him, and he knows that. 

 

He’s glad WICKED can’t track where— when? he goes. He doesn’t think he wants to let go of the possibility of traveling back to this time, where Newt’s delicate body is pressed up against his in the storage closet, away from the prying eyes of their friends. 

 

When he’s finally and properly “introduced” to the boys, Dr. Paige shoots him a knowing smile. He has a home here, in the present. In Newt, Alby, and Minho. He doesn’t want to jump anymore. Doesn’t want to see the grassy field or the endless sea of sand or the worried face of a girl he’s never seen before in his bed.

 

But he does.

 

He’s blinking awake on the floor in an unfamiliar household. A quick glance out the nearest window almost tells him it’s the Before. It’s snowing. He can’t remember a time where it snowed in the After. But the stillness of the outdoors and the unsettling quiet of late morning tells him it’s not the Before. And it hits him, then, that this isn’t his past. 

 

A sleepy mumble comes from the bed to his left, and he sits up slowly. Across from him, a small Newt and a girl (his sister..?) lie huddled together. Newt is blinking awake at Thomas, frowning at the appearance of a stranger in his room.

 

“I’m Thomas,” he hears himself say. Maybe this is the way things were supposed to turn out, him admitting the truth to a Newt who cannot, and possibly will never, understand. “You’re going to meet me in a few years.”

 

His gaze wanders to the window again, where the snowfall seems to have gotten heavier. Newt is in a daze, wondering what Thomas could possibly mean. 

 

“But I’ve met you before,” the blond protests weakly.

 

-

 

And Thomas jumps again. Not to the present, but to another point in Newt’s past. He doesn’t know when this is, but the boy is even younger and happily splashing in puddles on a cobbled street in an unscorched London, the bottom of his blue coat soaked.

 

“Hello!” Newt grins up at him, chubby cheeks and squinty eyes and everything present-day Newt lost to the sun.

 

“Hi,” uncertainty grips Thomas in a chokehold. How much has he done this? All the times in his childhood when he blanked out— was he here? With Newt? In the future-past? The concept hurts his four-year old brain, crammed with almost thirteen years of experience.

 

“I’m Sam!” The blond continues to smile, sunny disposition radiating despite the cloudy English skies. “What’s your name?”

 

Sam. So fitting, and yet, he can’t look at the boy without thinking of the way he breathlessly gasped _Newt_  sometime in the future.

 

The introduction slides easily off his lips. “I’m.. I’m Thomas.” And the name sounds foreign to him, but he can’t think of why. Whatever worries he has about his name disappear when Newt clasps their pudgy fingers together in a clumsy handshake.

 

“Nice to meet you, Thomas,” he says, faking an air of professionalism that dissolves quickly into giggles from both parties. 

 

When they recover from their laughing fits, Newt clings to Thomas’ wrist, eyes wide and shining with amusement. “Let’s be friends, Tommy.” His head perks up. A woman approaches, a warm smile gracing her aging features. Laugh lines run deep in the creases by her eyes, but do nothing to take away from her ethereal beauty. Excitedly, Newt drops Thomas’ arm and runs to the woman.

 

_Blink._

 

“Mum, mum, look, I’ve made a friend,” and Newt is gesturing wildly in his direction.

 

_Blink._

 

Thomas finds himself falling out of his bunk, arms flailing. An older Newt groans awake, the sudden cold of a missing blanket rousing him from his sleep.

 

“Bloody hell, Tommy,” Thomas sits up in alarm from his place on the metal floor, rubbing the back of his head. Newt is sleepily patting his surroundings, looking for the fallen blanket. "Took ya long enough."

 

And Thomas carelessly throws the covers over the blond, running to the bathrooms with his heart hammering and tears mixing with cold, clammy sweat.

 

He can’t take it. Jumping is too much for him. He can’t handle seeing Newt’s past, seeing Newt in the Before, seeing _Sam_.

 

-

 

Thomas has broken Newt’s heart more times than he can count. And yet, every jump, he finds himself crawling back to his Angel, broken, battered, and bruised a little more each time. He supposes this is Love, that which brings him to his knees before Newt, silently begging forgiveness for sins he has yet to commit.

 

He doesn’t deserve Newt’s patience. The boy is too soft, too gentle, too kind to do this to. And yet, he finds himself leaving the present and the past repeatedly, despite WICKED’s treatments, despite his own wishes. None of the Newts know where or when he goes. They just know they’ll see him again, eventually. 

 

-

 

The Maze Trials have begun, and Thomas sits, anxiously waiting. He knows what will happen in a year: Newt will jump, but not like Thomas. He knows this because he jumped into that moment of splintering agony, screaming to the heavens above about their fallen Angel, _his_ fallen Angel, his Newt— though, at the time, he didn’t know the boy’s name. Thomas was eight when he witnessed the phenomenon unfold unfiltered, and has since waited six years. The present is no longer comforting. The boys are gone; his only friend is Teresa, and maybe Dr. Paige. He can feel his stress rising. Knows it shows on some monitor, somewhere. 

 

When he blinks, he’s greeted by a gasping Newt, hands clumsily clinging to his wrists, pushing a pendant into his palms. 

 

_“Take it!”_ His mouth is spewing something black and foul, and dark veins pop from beneath his once-flawless skin. His pupils are blown, the irises ripped and the lovely brown all but gone. And yet, they soften as Newt lets out a shaky breath. _“Please.”_

 

Thomas blinks.

 

He’s back in the monitoring room, where a WICKED assistant is placing food by his station. The gravity of his situation seems to increase tenfold, and he looks down to find tears splashing on the surface of his interface. He’s still got a Beetle Blade set on following Newt around, much to the clueless blond’s chagrin. Newt is alive and okay right now— Thomas needn’t worry until months later. But his anxiety is the weight of the world, and if he is Atlas in this analogy, then he is losing strength and toppling to his side.

 

-

 

So this is how they end; much like how they begin. 

 

Newt is holding Thomas’ hands. 

 

Thomas is holding a gun, the cool surface of the barrel pressed against Newt’s pale forehead, black veins pulsing beneath the surface.

 

_“If you’ve ever been my friend, kill me.”_

 

_“Please, Tommy, Please.”_

 

And, with his heart falling into a black abyss, Thomas squeezes his eyes shut.

 

-

 

Thomas doesn’t know everything that happened in his past, nor everything that will come to pass in his future, but he’ll be damned if he lets inevitability win out. He vows to save his friends, then and there. Vows to save Newt.

 

Time trudges on.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> feel free to yell at me on [tumblr](http://rxtrogression.tumblr.com/) ahaha
> 
> peace, i'm out.  
> \- avery


	2. author commentary and methods

ahh alright, few things to say, hoping this doesn’t turn into a rant like before ahh

 

so, uh, i’ll be honest, i haven’t read the time traveler’s wife. the movie seemed sad, the book seemed sad, literally everything about it looked like it would shatter my heart. but shortly after eve was like, “time traveler thomas?” in the tmr discord chat, i threw my chem stuff down and went “FUCK YEAH TIME TRAVELER THOMAS” and read the wikipedia synopsis.

 

because i? somehow still want to make him suffer? ahaha

 

anyways. 

 

the original idea wasn’t meant to derail into an angsty pity party, i don’t think, but. that’s what i did, and i think it turned out okay.

 

i also sorta wanted to touch upon the concept of time traveling here. my interpretation deviates from the time traveler’s wife, mostly because i figured thomas would have enough to deal with without, yknow, missing clothes or whatever. so in my mind, the present thomas is the one who grows up and witnesses future/past events, but when preset thomas BECOMES future thomas, his thoughts are that OF future thomas. that sounds kind of confusing, i know. 

 

ahhh okay, say his consciousness is represented by the letter A, his future self B, and his past self C.

 

when A jumps to the future, he is still A. 

when A jumps to the past, he is still A.

A remains A in the present.

 

when A reaches a point in his life where he is B, B becomes A, and B becomes C. and so on and so forth.

 

now, with that cleared up, let’s talk themes!

 

the author of the time traveler’s wife, Audrey Niffeneger, uses time travel to comment on failed relationships and time. with this, i sorta wanted to put my twist on it? newtmas, here, isn’t a failed relationship so much as one that is _doomed_ to fail, if that makes sense? i wanted inevitability to be a recurring theme, much more so than the love between thomas and newt. 

 

i wanted to convey the inevitability of the end right from the start. that no matter what he does, thomas will _inevitably_ end up in the maze. he will _inevitably_ end up traveling through time to different points in his and newt’s life, and we see that he ends up breaking down when he sees the toll it has on newt. i don’t know how well this came across, but when thomas falls out of his bunk and newt is on it? that’s newt sleeping in thomas’ bunk. they don’t share a bunk. that’s newt _waiting_ for thomas. i don’t think i wrote that part in very well— then again, i don’t think i wrote anything well here, but i’ve received pretty positive criticism thus far? and i just figured that needed explaining.

 

thomas is in an endless cycle of coming back to newt at different points in time. i don’t want to reveal too much, since i want to leave the time gaps up to your interpretation as a reader, but just giving you food for thought here! 

 

and, to address the elephant in the room: did newt know about the time travel?

 

that’s up to you to decide :)

 

i know what i think, of course, and i know that i wrote it a little ambiguously on purpose. so hey, let your imagination run wild. imagine if he knew; would he feel the crushing inevitability? or if he didn’t know— how do you react when the love of your life is constantly disappearing, an enigma?

 

now, the whole heaven thing.

 

newt is very explicitly compared to an angel, and yes, i can hear you rolling your eyes at me. how cliche. newt’s an angel, wowow, how original. and yeah, in part, the cliche was a factor in pushing me _away_ from posting this to ao3 at all. but i also did a bit of digging before sitting down to write this, and i’d like to tie in some themes predominant in henry’s character (analogous to thomas’ character) from the time traveler’s wife.

 

henry sorta just like, goes along with the time jumps. he doesn’t try to change the outcome of events that have passed because, to put it simply, _they’ve already happened._ and what does that make of a person? would you not expect crippling cynicism from the weight of inevitability?

 

and that leads me to thomas’ rather out-of-character narration: 

 

“But Thomas knows how time works, knows that whatever will come to pass will come regardless of what he does. He knows that the past happened, whether or not he was there to witness it. He’s stuck waiting for the future to happen, waiting for the anguish and heartbreak that he knows will come.”

 

because thomas in tmr is portrayed as somebody who can’t take predestination as an answer, this was a little difficult to get down. thomas canonically has never stopped fighting, and that’s part of what makes his character a little boring, in my opinion. so, in a rather uncharacteristic move, he gives up. he lets time run its course, almost religiously. he surrenders his whole being to jumping, even though he doesn’t want it to happen. but consider: he physically hasn’t experienced parts of his past. he blacks out because he’s jumping between timelines. his life isn’t lived linearly, with no explanation. and it got me thinking: when your life is like that, when you can’t even live your life in order, who do you turn to? how can you let yourself fall in love with somebody whose future and _death_ , even, you’ve witnessed? partaken in? in hindsight, perhaps i made thomas a little too strong in this story. if i stuck with my non-canon thomas, i would have ended up at him buckling underneath it all. so what did he turn to?

 

like many lost people, he turned to religion. but not conventional, modern day religion. he turns to the sky, to whatever deities exist above, for answers, solutions, hope, whatever. and this is where newt as a comparable angel comes into play.

 

newt serves as a sort of saviour to thomas. he’s the only constant in every time skip. he’s the only one other than thomas’ mother that has experienced thomas’ jumps to a personal degree, and instead of turning away, he waits. so, angel that he is, he keeps thomas from debilitating cynicism. my deus ex machina, if you will. newt saved thomas from himself, and in this sense, i felt it appropriate to include the whole heaven thing.

 

last thing: circles.

 

you may or may not have noticed, but just to emphasize, we always come back to the present. i view time as a loop, personally. i believe that every decision leads to an alternate outcome, with the other possibility caught in a loop of _what if_. my personal views aside, i’d like to sort of comment on the whole “so this is how they meet” thing. 

 

newt’s obviously met thomas before they “meet” officially, in the present. in a sense, newt’s known thomas all his life, and thomas has dreaded meeting him. i’m a huge fan of poetry, and i thought it might be neat to include something akin to anaphora? a literary feature encompassing the concept of looping time and one that brings it back to newt. because in this universe, everything comes back to newt, eventually. this point is rather self-explanatory, so i won’t dwell on it.

 

anyways, i hope you enjoyed reading my little fic! if you got to the end of this word vomit, congratulations? thanks for sticking around to read my endless train of thought.

 

thank you to eve, bia, chloe, amirah, jo, eleanor, timna, owen, amanda, and eisha for their kind words and support! you lovely people are the main thing that kept me writing after the little blurb i posted in the chat.

 

and thank you, dear reader, for reading!

 

edit: oh my god i ranted aGAIN christ this shit is almost as long as the actual fic i aklsjjkldfs


End file.
